The Mystic Marriage —
Heather Rose Jones
Alpennia, book 2

2015’s
The
Mystic Marriage is the second volume in Heather Rose Jones’ Alpennia series.

Antuniet
Chazillen has lost everything: her foolish brother has been executed
for treason and her mother is dead by her own hand. Antuniet has been
stripped of her aristocratic rank. Determined to restore the family
honour, Antuniet flees Alpennia for Austria, there to use her
alchemical skills to win back for her family the respect and position
her brother cost it.

In
Austria she finds a treasure of rare value, a treasure others are
determined to wrest from her. She escapes from Vienna to Heidelberg,
but her enemies are still close on her heels. She sees no choice but
to trade her virtue for transportation to safety.

Which
means returning to Alpennia…

Many
aristocrats (heirs, rentiers, etc.) are drones; they would be unable
to support themselves once stripped of their parasitic privileges.
Not so Antuniet: she is a skilled and knowledgeable alchemist. She
has the standing to take on students of her own. Even in a nation as
small as Alpennia, there are openings for a teacher of the art. One
patron is all she needs, one rich family to support her as she
wrestles with her true work.

Any
alchemist worth the title knows the name DeBroodt. The famed
alchemist’s secrets were lost with his death centuries ago. Or so
it seemed. In fact DeBroodt kept a journal. Antuniet found the lost
tome, which had fallen by chance behind a bookcase. The journal gives
her a foundation on which she can build a career of her own. It also
makes her, and anyone near her, a target for Austrians determined to
recover what they see as a national treasure. It turns out that her
flight to Alpennia didn’t make Antuniet any safer. It has merely
endangered people in Alpennia who might otherwise have been perfectly safe.

Proud
Antuniet may think she is a pariah, that she has no friends not
bought with her services. In fact, she could not be more wrong.
Despite the role they played in her brother’s downfall (he really
WAS plotting treason), neither the freshly minted Baroness Saveze nor
her lover Magerit bear any ill-will towards Antuniet herself. If only
Antuniet could be convinced to accept their help!

Antuniet
has another friend … or shall we say admirer. Jeanne, Vicomtesse de
Cherdillac, is obviously interested in the alchemist. Antuniet
regards Jeanne as a mere philanderer. It’s true that the Vicomtesse
is notorious for her endless infatuations and affairs. It is also
true that Jeanne’s affairs are an attempt to distract herself from
despair. Despair at her hopeless, sincere love for Antuniet [1].

Antuniet
may be too proud to accept that she has friends, even a true love.
Too bad for the alchemist. She most definitely has enemies. Without
allies, she could end her days on the same execution ground where her
brother died.

~oOo~

I
am not especially interested in the troubles of the titled classes;
some of them deserved (and deserve) the guillotine. The author
manages to disarm my antipathy in a couple of ways. For one thing,
the peasants don’t seem to be starving, a blessing the peasantry of
contemporary nations do not enjoy. For another, the author has not
written aristocratic fanfic; she does not take an uncritical view of
Alpennian society.

(Which
reminds me of Bujold’s take on Barrayar. Bujold shows us Barrayar
at moment when that backward, unpleasant world happens to have a
decent regent and a tolerable emperor, both of whom work to mitigate
the injustices of the past. Thanks to authorial fiat, the system
makes a better impression than it might have at other points in its
history (or than it would have if Serg had taken the throne).
Heather Rose Jones shows us an Alpennian society that is undeniably
unjust … and that is also ruled by people who lack the compassion,
the honor, of an Aral or a Cordelia.)

Like Daughter of Mystery’s
Margarit and Barbara, Antuniet has been denied the privileges her
rank would otherwise grant her. She’s willing to put in the hard
work to get it back. Indeed, offered easy solutions, she refuses them
in favour of winning the prize legitimately. This is not a story of
someone who succeeds by virtue of having diligently chosen the right
parents, but of someone who has to actually struggle.

As
in another alternate history, The House of Shattered Wings, this secondary world is governed by physical laws quite
different from ours—both magic (called “mysteries”) and
functioning alchemy exist. How odd then, that history has travelled
along very familiar paths [2]. Not only does France exist, its recent
history is the same as that of France in our own timeline. IMHO, this
is just another instance of alternate history filing off the serial
numbers rather than thinking through what would have changed in this setting.

Though
there are hints that science (in this case the science of magic) is
marching on. Most people in this world still see magic through
theological lenses (as we learned in the previous volume), but there
are intriguing hints that systematization and rationalization impend.
One suspects that this world has its own scientific revolution
bearing down on it. One wonders what their Maxwell will make of magic [3].

As
is usual in stories requiring plot complication, Antuniet and
Jeanne’s romance does not unfold simply and directly. No “I like
you. Do you like me?” Or Betan earrings.

In
this case, Antuniet is handicapped by her own poor self-image and the
unjustly negative view she has of Jeanne. There is also the fact that
Alpennian women are discouraged from falling in love with each other
… or even considering the possibility that they might do so.
(Though Antuniet does at least know that Baroness Saveze and Magerit
are a happy couple.) I could have done without the complications, but
they were at least plausible. (I should perhaps add that being hunted
by armed robbers [4] and being suspected of treason (like her
brother) are also plausible distractions.)

The
book runs in some well-worn grooves, but it is competently plotted
and written. The characters are appealing; the suspense kept me
turning pages. Also, there is kissing. A fine amusement.

1:
Best not to think too much about what life is like for POOR Alpennian
lesbians and gays. If you are rich, you can be eccentric, Without
money, you are probably ostracized, exiled, or executed. Alpennians
do love their death penalties.

2:
“Just like our universe, except for this one thing that makes it
completely
not like our universe”
is very disconcerting to me, because I’m logical.

3:
I suppose it’s possible that one member of the small community of
alchemists and magically adept in Alpennia will turn out to be the
Maxwell of Magic. In fact, Antuniet might be the one. However, our
own history suggests that pocket kingdoms have a dismal record when
it comes to contributing to scientific progress (though perhaps the Scottish Enlightenment might be
considered a disproof). Probably because you need a large enough
community to provide the intellectual critical mass.